Earlier this month, meanwhile, City Councilors Felix Arroyo, Chuck Turner, and Charles Yancey were about to propose a relatively muscular CRB, one capable of issuing subpoenas and holding public hearings. But when Menino learned what the councilors were up to, he stole the spotlight by making a proposal of his own — for a watered-down body that would include both police and civilians, and whose proceedings would be closed to the public.

Snitching: a two-way street
What exactly is going on here? Menino, of course, wants us to think that he’s just being practical. After all, if a CRB could keep the cops from doing their jobs, who needs it? Ditto for a commissioner search that includes public participation, which Menino claims could scare away potential candidates. (A recent mayoral press release cast Menino’s opposition to transparency in vaguely heroic terms: “Mayor Menino made it known he would not compromise the city’s ability to attract the very best candidates if the process alone will discourage them from applying.”)

SERVE AND PROTECT: Menino wants control of the BPD, and greater public involvement in the search for O'Toole's replacement would undermine this goal.

It’s difficult to take Menino’s objections at face value, however. Granted, a civilian-review board might not be the panacea some of its proponents claim it to be. “It’s really been a mixed bag in terms of impact,” says Dr. Michael White, an assistant professor at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, of the civilian-review movement. “The perception among many people is, ‘if we can just get this board going, it’s going to fix everything,’ and it’s very clear to me that’s not the case.”

Even so, casting a CRB as a Trojan horse that would render the Boston Police powerless is absurd. Why, if that were a real risk, would O’Toole have recommended such a body in the first place? And why would so many other cities — Austin, Baltimore, Miami, Philadelphia, and Washington, to name just a few — have them already? If Menino talks the issue over with his fellow mayors, he’ll hear assessments like this one, from a spokesperson for Knoxville mayor Bill Haslam: “The mayor is very pleased with the way the committee” — i.e., Knoxville’s Police Advisory and Review Committee — “has operated. He understands that there were concerns in the police department when it was initially formed, but he really feels like it’s a positive now that it’s underway.”

As for the commissioner search: maybe some outstanding applicants would, in fact, be reluctant to apply if they knew their identities would be publicly disclosed. But Menino’s recent handling of the BPD could be just as off-putting. Hark back to Menino’s public undercutting of O’Toole on the civilian-review issue: if you were a talented cop looking to head a department, would you want to go to work for a mayor who considered his own law-enforcement sense superior to your own? Or a mayor who, by installing his former driver in a key police-department leadership position, openly signaled his determination to be actively involved in the department’s day-to-day operations?

Asians for Yoon — or maybe the other guy(s) When you're running against a politician as entrenched, powerful, and seemingly unbeatable as Boston Mayor Tom Menino, it's hard to get your supporters to proudly tout their allegiance.

Free for all Striking parallels emerge between the upcoming mayor's race and the historic race of 1983.

Disclosure: not a dirty word The City Hall e-mail scandal that has scored headlines in recent weeks exemplifies Mayor Thomas Menino's antagonistic — almost contemptuous — attitude toward public accountability.

Curb Your Enthusiasm Nine months ago, on the heels of the Obama-assisted deluge at the polls, political observers anticipated mayoral fever triggering huge voter turnout in the Hub this fall. Now, as the race has so far been a bust, they are downgrading their expectations.

Feels like the first timeIn the early ’90s, after the St. Clair Commission’s damning assessment of the BPD, then–police commissioner Mickey Roache created a “community-appeals board” (CAB) to provide a modicum of civilian oversight. But the CAB was hamstrung by its lack of investigative powers — “Nobody is going to investigate this department,” Roache vowed — and quickly faded into irrelevancy.

ARTICLES BY ADAM REILLY

BULLY FOR BU! | March 12, 2010 After six years at the Phoenix , I recently got my first pre-emptive libel threat. It came, most unexpectedly, from an investigative reporter. And beyond the fact that this struck me as a blatant attempt at intimidation, it demonstrated how tricky journalism's new, collaboration-driven future could be.

STOP THE QUINN-SANITY! | March 03, 2010 The year is still young, but when the time comes to look back at 2010's media lowlights, the embarrassing demise of Sally Quinn's Washington Post column, "The Party," will almost certainly rank near the top of the list.

RIGHT CLICK | February 19, 2010 Back in February 2007, a few months after a political neophyte named Deval Patrick cruised to victory in the Massachusetts governor's race with help from a political blog named Blue Mass Group (BMG) — which whipped up pro-Patrick sentiment while aggressively rebutting the governor-to-be's critics — I sized up a recent conservative entry in the local blogosphere.

RANSOM NOTES | February 12, 2010 While reporting from Afghanistan two years ago, David Rohde became, for the second time in his career, an unwilling participant rather than an observer. On October 29, 1995, Rohde had been arrested by Bosnian Serbs. And then in November 2008, Rohde and two Afghan colleagues were en route to an interview with a Taliban commander when they were kidnapped.

POOR RECEPTION | February 08, 2010 The right loves to rant against the "liberal-media elite," but there's one key media sector where the conservative id reigns supreme: talk radio.